Kindle Fire HD: A closer look at the apps and features of Amazon’s Android fork

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Amazon’s new Kindle Fires are a step up in the hardware department, but what really differentiates these devices in the tablet ecosystem is the software. Amazon has forked Android and continues to add features you can’t get anywhere else. This is a refinement of the software that launched on last year’s Kindle Fire, but it includes some new technologies that could give Amazon an edge.

The hallmark of the Kindle Fire’s user interface is the carousel, and it’s still present in the new tablets. This is a chronological list of all the apps, music, books, and other content that you have viewed. It’s very straightforward and easy to grasp for novice users. You cannot deny that stock Android 4.1 on a device like the Nexus 7 is more powerful, but that’s not the goal here.

Just like Android itself is more clean and functional than it was back in the Fall of 2011, Amazon’s Android fork is looking nicer. The heavily skeuomorphic wooden bookshelves seen throughout the UI have been eliminated in favor of darker borders with a subtle gradient effect in places. Amazon has also improved the hardware toggles and notifications by adopting the standard Android notification shade. These are all great improvements, but we won’t know if the lag from the previous Kindle Fire has been fixed until we see a final shipping unit.

In addition to what we’ve already seen from Amazon’s Android build, there are some features that leverage the retail giant’s content ecosystem. First up is an expansion of Amazon’s X-Ray service. This is essentially an information discovery service that quickly answers all those little questions you come up with while reading a book or watching a movie.

X-Ray is powered by IMDB, so if you’re watching a film and you need to know where you’ve seen that actor, you can just call up X-Ray and it tells you. X-Ray has been around for some time now on the Kindle Touch, but it was only available for books. The new Fire software adds the IMDB film data, as well as some content for textbooks. Selected words and phrases in some textbooks can be activated to bring up a web-based glossary.

You may not be aware of this, but way back in Android 2.2 Froyo, Google added the ability for developers to make cloud backups of your app data. This is a great feature because it means you can sync saved games and settings to multiple devices. To my great and eternal dismay, app developers have failed to take advantage. Amazon is expanding its Whispersync technology to cover game data, and that’s very cool.

Since Amazon runs its own Appstore for Android, it gets to dictate terms to devs. If Amazon chooses to make the cloud syncing mandatory, it will actually happen. If you get a new device, or switch to a different Kindle device, you would be able to pick up where you left off thanks to Whinspersync.

Whispersync is also being used in the new Kindle’s Immersion Reading. As it happens, Immersion Reading is a new feature that could be incredibly cool by itself. This is the fusion of Audible audiobooks and Kindle e-books. You will be able to follow along in the Kindle book as a professional narrator reads to you. That’s so much better than that robotic Kindle voice. All this progress will be synced to the cloud so you can pick up on with either voice or text later.

Amazon has also revamped some of its apps for the new Kindle Fires. I had no end of issues with the last Fire’s email client, but Amazon claims the new version has improved syncing and support for Exchange. Additionally, custom Skype and Facebook clients will be deployed to the new tablets. Amazon’s multi-account settings and parental controls make this a kid-friendly device to have around the house too.

Amazon’s software lacks the full range of customizations you get with stock Android, but it looks more focused. If you want to consume content without having to worry about the details, the new Kindle Fire tablets look good. The sleeker UI and more expansive syncing are sure to make buyers happy. I’m not sure it’s a better deal overall when compared to the Nexus 7 or the upcoming (rumored) iPad Mini, but Amazon is certainly in the running.

Updated: In case you were wondering, Amazon has now confirmed that the Kindle Fire HD is running a modified version (fork) of Android Ice Cream Sandwich. ICS is a significant upgrade from Gingerbread, which should make the new Fires feel much slicker.

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Don’t forget it’s apps that sell phones and tablets and Amazon doesn’t have very many. That’s the one flaw with Amazon taking on Apple and other Android tablet makers

chojin999

Exactly. People buying Android smartphones and tablets want everything for free. They don’t even want to pay for $0.50 apps. Many developers are abandoning the Android platform completely.
iOS customers 90% of them want quality and have no problem buying cheap apps.

Can you browse the internet with the Kindle Fire HD like a regular web brower or is it restricted to only reading stuff in the Amazon environment as well as watching movies supply only by Amazon? Can you go to a website like this and browse it? Not sure the difference between this and other tablets.

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